Love at First Sight

Wet, greasy smears led across the living room floor of 27 Wentwest Place, ending at a rear bedroom. Inside, the owner lay next to an overturned dresser, jeans around his ankles, the rubbery pink rope of his intestines spread across the carpet. The stench, like half-cooked mincemeat, sent me out to the sink to puke. Contaminating a crime scene is unprofessional; not drawing my Glock was a bad mistake.

The killer heaved itself into the dining room and reared up on that muscular, splayed tail, flicking aside the oversized table with a twitch. It was wet with saliva and blood, and I suddenly understood the slimy trails. It’s absurd what you focus on when death looks your way.

I hoped it hadn’t seen me. I didn’t move.

It screamed like birds being slaughtered and turned away. I could have run. My hand started for my gun, but its head snapped back around and its eyes locked mine. Lips slid across thick fangs, and it drooled. A grown man doesn’t piss in his pants, but I was close. It was alien, maybe, or demon: something that shouldn’t exist in Auckland city. Something that tore a man apart like pizza. New Zealand Police training doesn’t cover monsters. I should have squeezed off rounds until I ran out of ammo.

Instead, I cowered in the kitchen doorway while it inhaled me with its eyes.

Those eyes: vertically slashed, black pupils on golden orbs. The pupils are deep and dark, like a coalmine. Reptilian and seductive. Erotically charged.

—§—

That’s odd. Mumbling to myself now? I dreamed for a moment, like an abstracted driver drifting into oncoming traffic. My heart is kicking as if I dodged a head-on.

Something has my imagination dangerously amped. Although, Miss Hot Eyes appears not to notice my confusion. She glances over her shoulder as she heads for the bedroom, holds my gaze a little too long. I get that look from time to time: some girls like the uniform, and some like the gun. Thankfully, my Glock was holstered when she dropped in. I might have shot an innocent.

I need to try and forget those eyes. I need to focus. But it’s hard with such a beauty waiting. For some reason, by the sounds of it, she’s dragging around furniture. Have I’ve missed something? Something I should jot in my notebook? Was she evasive? All I recall are those fantastic eyes: amber pools of sin.

I want to speak with the owner, and it’s a pity he isn’t here. He called about the neighbours, or the neighbours called about him. Something like that. Or was somebody worried about that peculiar smell? Perhaps that’s why I’m sitting out here on his leather sofa, while she’s rummaging around in the back room for his phone number. Stunning girl. I’d bet she’s a model.

It would be unprofessional to enter her bedroom uninvited. My breath quickens at the thought. I should just leave. There really doesn’t seem to be any need to call this one in.

No. I should make sure she is okay. I wouldn’t be the first officer to do a little extra, shall we say, legwork in a situation such as this. Maybe I’ll just get her details and leave my card. Who knows what might happen?

She really has got great eyes.

Ω

Adrian Firth lives in Auckland, NZ with his wife and a writing addiction. He has worked as a teacher, real estate agent, bartender, horticulturalist, computer systems trainer, technology writer, and web developer. But not all at the same time.